Androctonus genus species in arid regions: Ecological niche models, geographical distributions, and envenomation risk

Vet World Vol.11 March-2018 Article-5

Research Article

Veterinary World, 11(3): 286-292

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2018.286-292

Moulay Abdelmonaim El Hidan¹, Oulaid Touloun^1,2, Abdellah Bouazza³, Mehdi Ait Laaradia⁴, and Ali Boumezzough¹

1. Department of Biology, Laboratory of Ecology and Environment, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh 40000, PO Box 2390, Morocco.
2. Department of Biology, Polyvalent Laboratory of Research & Development LPVRD, Polydisciplinary Faculty, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal, PO Box 23023, Morocco.
3. Faculty of Sciences, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics Laboratory, B.P. 2390, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech 40000, Morocco.
4. Department of Biology, Laboratory of Pharmacology, Neurobiology and Behavior, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, University Cadi Ayyad, Marrakesh, Morocco.

Background and Aim: The objective of this study was to establish environmental factors related to scorpion species occurrence and their current potential geographic distributions in Morocco, to produce a current envenomation risk map and also to assess the human population at risk of envenomation.

Materials and Methods: In this study, 71 georeferenced points for all scorpion species and nine environmental indicators were used to generate species distribution models in Maxent (maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions) version 3.3.3k. The models were evaluated by the area under the curve (AUC), using the omission error and the binomial probability. With the data generated by Maxent, distribution and envenomation risk maps were produced using the "ESRI® ArcGIS 10.2.2 for Desktop" software.

Results: The models had high predictive success (AUC >0.95±0.025). Altitude, slope and five bioclimatic attributes were found to play a significant role in determining Androctonus scorpion species distribution. Ecological niche models (ENMs) showed high concordance with the known distribution of the species. Produced risk map identified broad risk areas for Androctonus scorpion envenomation, extending along Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, Souss-Massa-Draa, and some areas of Doukkala-Abda and Oriental regions.

Conclusion: Considering these findings ENMs could be useful to afford important information on distributions of medically important scorpion species as well as producing scorpion envenomation risk maps. Keywords: Androctonus genus, ecological niche models, Morocco, risk maps, scorpion envenomation.

Keywords: Androctonus genus, ecological niche models, Morocco, risk maps, scorpion envenomation.

How to cite this article: El Hidan MA, Touloun O, Bouazza A, Laaradia MA, Boumezzough A (2018) Androctonus genus species in arid regions: Ecological niche models, geographical distributions, and envenomation risk, Veterinary World, 11(3): 286-292.

Received: 24-09-2017 Accepted: 02-02-2018 Published online: 06-03-2018

Corresponding author: Moulay Abdelmonaim El Hidan E-mail: elhidan@gmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2018.286-292

Copyright: El Hidan, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.